Out of the four main adult influences in Pip's life who do you feel is the most important & influential in building Pip's character?The four adults...

While this question involves a reader's personal
interpretation of Dickens's great novel, it is Magwitch who exerts the most influence
upon Pip throughout the narrative. For, it is his appearance in the first chapter
which initiates Pip's sense of guilt that haunts him throughout the narrative, and his
desire for a father that cannot be fulfilled by Joe who is too servile to his shrewish
wife.  In addition, it is Magwitch who is the secret benefactor, generating Pip's "great
expectations" and his journey to maturity as he goes to London, becomes educated,
rencounters Estella and Miss Havisham, and eventually is converted from his selfishness
and snobbery as he cares for Magwitch, who then effects Pip's adjustment of
values.

Pip's guilt and social
position

After he steals the food and the
file for the convict, Pip is haunted by guilt, imagining that he hears voices accusing
him.  As he runs to the Battery, Pip feels as though he carries a load on his leg: 
"...the damp cold seemed riveted as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man...."  In
another chapter, when he sits with Joe at the Jolly Bargeman and he sees the mysterious
man stir his drink with Joe's file, Pip feels guilty. Then, after his sister dies,
Pip feels somehow guilty, "a shock of regret," and when he sees the old leg-iron from
the convict as the murder weapon, his feelings of guilt are again attached to
Magwitch.

Having assumed Magwitch's guilt, Pip also
figuratively assumes his social position.  He lives in a sordid apartment and is exposed
to Newgate prison in the persons of both Mr. Jaggers and Mr. Wemmick.  With Jaggers, who
is described as setting traps Pip becomes a victim of his equivocations whenever he is
summoned to his office.  Even Miss Havisham tells Pip regarding his relationship with
Estella, "You made your own snares."

Pip's
search for a father

Because of his snobbery
at having become a gentleman, Pip rejects Joe who visits him in London and fails to
visit whenever he is near the forge.  It is only after he listens to Magwitch tell his
sad tale of being "in jail, out of jail, in jail, out of jail" and his exploitation by
Compeyson, that Pip attains sympathy for the man of a simple nobilty.  This sentiment
then extends from Pip to Joe, who cares so deeply for him.  Now free to be his father
after Pip's sister's death, Joe welcomes the prodigal son Pip upon his return to the
forge. From Magwitch, Pip has learned that true goodness and nobility lies not in wealth
and titles, but in many of the poor, simple people like Joe and
Biddy.

In his essay, "Imagery and Theme in Great
Expectations," in Dickens Studies Annual, Robert Barnard
writes,

It is
through the use of this image [Pip as social convict] that we see most clearly that, as
Pip takes over the same metaphor as the convict, he assumes his share in his guilt and
emotionally comprehends his position in society. The child can both pity the convict and
put himself imaginatively in his position. The young man with "expectations" and a
horror of crime can do neither, which makes doubly ironical Magwitch's part in bringing
about this change in character.